CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Lola Dickinson |
|---|---|
| Title | Discursive Interventions and Transnational Networks of Sex Workers: Britain, France, and The US From 1973-1990 |
| Summary | This thesis analyses the ways sex worker activists in the US, Britain and France produced and challenged discourses of sexual labour, “the prostitute” and sexuality between 1973 and 1990. Within these years and in each of these countries, sex workers formed formal activist groups and established transnational networks to challenge the discrimination and criminalisation that sex workers faced. Differences between sex worker activist perspectives, as well as their challenges to radical feminist ideas, have not been centred within the existing literature. Further, within historical literature sex worker activism in the Global North has not been situated within a transnational context. This thesis utilises two theoretical frameworks: first, sex worker activists as producers of feminist knowledge and, second, Gira Grant’s “prostitute imaginary”. These framed my analysis of materials which document the voices and synthesised analysis of the key sex worker activist groups in the US, Britain, and France. I explore sex workers’ narratives of sexual labour, sexual identity and women’s sexuality. This thesis argues, firstly, that sex worker activists refuted the construction of “the prostitute” by introducing new discourses around selling sex. Sex worker activists challenged the association between selling sex and criminality and negligence. Secondly, I argue that sex worker activists disrupted conventional constructions of sexuality. Sex worker activists constructed sexuality through the navigation of both a “work identity” and a “personal identity” in conflicting and ambiguous ways. Lastly, I argue that transnationality was a significant aspect of sex worker activism. Through transnational networks, sex worker activists formulated and honed their analysis and perspectives and supported each other’s struggles across borders. Further, through an analysis of the work of certain explicitly transnational groups, I argue that aspects of neo-colonialism were perpetuated by sex worker activism. |
| Supervisor | de Haan, Francisca |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/dickinson_lola.pdf |
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